Personal attacks in and around vehicles are becoming more and more commonplace in certain areas of the world. People are experiencing kidnappings, car-jackings, and other assaults while driving or otherwise using their vehicles. Victims experiencing these personal emergencies may wish to call someone for help. In some cases, they may have access to their phone and be able to use it and dial for help. In other cases, however, the phone may be unavailable, or the driver may be unable to use the phone for safety reasons.
Although alarm systems for vehicles exist, such as panic systems, it may be undesirable to alert an assailant that an alarm has been triggered. Whether a “panic” style alarm or one that notifies the police, alarm triggering may cause an assailant to escalate actions towards the victim.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,013,734 generally discusses a method of alarm notification. An alert mode of a mobile device is activated based on an emergency situation in an area. The mobile device transmits an indication of the emergency situation to a communication network control system. The communication network control system confirms the indication of the emergency situation to the mobile device and notifies emergency personnel of the indication of the emergency situation. The communication network control system transmits an indication of the emergency situation to one or more additional mobile devices in the area.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/368,947 generally discusses methods and apparatus for providing useful data in association with a high-priority call such as an emergency call. In one embodiment, the data comprises a data (e.g., an MSD or FSD) embedded within one or more real-time protocol packets such as RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) packets, that are interspersed within the voice or user data stream (carried in e.g., RTP packets) of an emergency call. Apparatus and methods are described for transmitting the data portion reliably from the initiating terminal (e.g., an in-vehicle system) to a Public Safety Answering Point CPSAP), by using the same transport connection as the user data.